At sundown tonight, Jewish families and friends will gather for the start of Rosh Hashanah, dipping apple slices in honey to bring in a sweet new year. This is tradition - but the year can be even sweeter with different types of honey, and more honey in general.

We were inspired by our hives in The Chronicle's rooftop garden, which has yielded three batches of honey since last summer - three radically different batches of honey. Same bees, same place, different honey.

The first summer batch was light and floral. The second, harvested in fall 2011, was grainier, with faint eucalyptus-like flavors. The latest batch, harvested in July, came out thick with mild spicy notes.

That prompted us to take a look at the wide range of honeys on the market, and whether or not their distinct flavors would remain once they were used in cooking.

We posed the question: In the kitchen, when heat enters the picture, does the type of honey make a difference?

Turns out it can.

We made the same simple ice cream recipe three times in The Chronicle test kitchen, using three commercial honeys: orange blossom, raw buckwheat and the clover honey that comes in the plastic bear container.

The Food & Wine staff crowded around the tubs of ice cream, debating preferences. The orange blossom ice cream was light and floral, the buckwheat was dark and malty, and the clover sweet and subtle.

Jake Godby, chef-owner of Humphry Slocombe in San Francisco, has churned a few honey ice creams in his day, with honey thyme and Harvey Milk - honey ice cream with graham crackers - in the regular rotation. He's made batches with top-shelf honey to "incredible" results, but sticks to a more affordable raw blackberry honey for the shop.

But, for the home churner, the extra expense might be worth it.

"The nuances are there," he says.

Yet, other times, a cheap plastic bear will do. Godby once made a burnt honey ice cream, which had a rich, caramel flavor. But when you're cooking honey at that high a temperature for that long, any burnt honey is going to taste like burnt honey.

With the thick, grainy raw buckwheat in mind, we chose to slightly heat our honeys with cream when we made our ice cream bases - just so they blended to a uniform consistency. The flavors of the honey were still powerful in the end result.

Similarly, we melted down the three honeys with hot water to create honey simple syrups. We dropped the syrups in a cocktail shaker with lemon juice, gin and ice and ended up with three wonderfully distinct concoctions - a great option for enlivening the new year with honey.

Traditionally, Rosh Hashanah calls for honey cake. With the integrity of honey in mind, we preferred honey ice cream for a sweet ending.

In baking, heat causes the different components in honey to react with others, and honey's high level of fructose browns faster than sugar. In other words, high heat zaps the flavor, resulting in a cake with only a hint of honey that's also more likely to taste burnt.

We baked a basic honey loaf twice in The Chronicle test kitchen - once with the orange blossom and once with the buckwheat. While the buckwheat loaf came out darker, with a warmer, nuttier flavor, the differences were slight compared with what we saw in the ice creams and cocktails. The buckwheat honey - very robust in its raw state - was reduced to a subtlety. In the end, we didn't care for either version very much.

When Flo Braker, The Chronicle's baking columnist for more than 20 years, bakes with honey as a main ingredient, she always lowers the temperature by 25 degrees to avoid browning too quickly. She agrees that baking with a boutique honey will change the result, but not to the same degree as in a sauce or glaze. Or as in ice cream. Or a cocktail.

Raw? Pasteurized? Creamed? Single nectar? Generic?

It both matters and doesn't matter. In his ice creams, Godby chooses raw and floral honeys because that's what he likes, but any honey will work in the accompanying recipes. If you love your chosen honey in its raw state, you should love it in whatever you're cooking.

Honeybee Chronicles:

What we learned in our third harvest of The Chronicle's rooftop honey. Home & Garden

Honey Ice Cream

Makes 1 quart

2 cups heavy cream

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup honey

-- Pinch of salt

1 cup whole milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions: Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium non-aluminum saucepan. Add the sugar, honey and salt. Warm over medium-low heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves and the honey has been incorporated.

Remove from heat and stir in remaining 1 cup cream, the milk and the vanilla extract.

Chill the mixture for at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight. Freeze it in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.